Dino De Laurentiis

Agostino De Laurentiis was born in Torre Annunziata, Kingdom of Italy, on 8 August 1919. He grew up selling spaghetti made by his father's pasta factory. His older brother, Luigi De Laurentiis (1917–1992), later followed him into film production. He studied at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in 1937 and 1938, but his studies were interrupted by the outbreak of World War II.^[1]

De Laurentiis produced his first film, L'ultimo Combattimento, in 1941. His company, the Dino de Laurentiis Cinematografica, moved into film production in 1946. In the early years, De Laurentiis produced Italian neorealist films such as Bitter Rice (1949) and the early Fellini works La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1956), often in collaboration with producer Carlo Ponti.

In the 1960s, De Laurentiis built his own studio facilities. He produced such films as Barabbas (1961), a Christian religious epic; The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966); Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die, an imitation James Bond film; Navajo Joe (1966), a spaghetti Western; Anzio (1968), a World War II film; Barbarella (1968) and Danger: Diabolik (1968), both successful comic book adaptations; and The Valachi Papers (1972), released before its originally scheduled date in order to capitalize on the popularity of The Godfather.^{[citation needed]}

In 1973, De Laurentiis relocated his headquarters to New York and he was reportedly considering to produce an American television series.^[2] His studio financially collapsed during the 1970s.^{[citation needed]} In the 1980s, he had his own studio: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (DEG) based in Wilmington, North Carolina. The studio made Wilmington an unexpected center of film and television production.^[3] In 1990, he obtained backing from an Italian friend and formed another company: Dino De Laurentiis Communications in Beverly Hills.

De Laurentiis produced a number of successful films, including The Scientific Cardplayer (1972), Serpico (1973), Death Wish (1974), Mandingo (1975), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Shootist (1976), Drum (1976), Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (1977), Ragtime (1981), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Blue Velvet (1986) and Breakdown (1997). De Laurentiis' name became well known through the 1976 King Kong remake, which was a commercial hit; Lipstick (1976), a rape and revenge drama; Orca (1977), a killer whale film; The White Buffalo (1977), a western; the disaster movie Hurricane (1979); the remake of Flash Gordon (1980); David Lynch's Dune (1984); The Bounty (1984); and King Kong Lives (1986).

De Laurentiis produced several adaptations of Stephen King works, including The Dead Zone (1983), Cat's Eye (1985), Silver Bullet (1985), and Maximum Overdrive (1986). De Laurentiis' company was involved with the horror sequels Halloween II (1981), Evil Dead II (1987), and Army of Darkness (1992). De Laurentiis also produced the first Hannibal Lecter film, Manhunter (1986), an adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon. He passed on adapting the novels' sequel, The Silence of the Lambs (1991),^{[citation needed]} but produced the two follow-ups, Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002), a re-adaptation of the novel. He also produced the prequel Hannibal Rising (2007), which tells the story of how Hannibal becomes a serial killer.

DDL Foodshow was an Italian specialty foods store with three locations: two in New York City and one in Beverly Hills. They were opened in the mid-1980s, and were owned and operated by De Laurentiis.^[4]

The first store was opened in the restored palm court in the ornate lobby of the historic Endicott Hotel, now a co-op on Manhattan's Upper West Side, near the existing Zabar's food emporium on Broadway.^[5] The first NYC store opened in November 1982, and it was reported that the store "opened to crowds of 30,000 over the Thanksgiving weekend, when de Laurentiis himself greeted customers at the door". The store's assistant manager said that "it was like the premiere of a movie".^[6]

The food critic Gael Greene wrote a scathing review on the opening in New York.^[5] In an interview with the Chicago Tribune a month later, she admitted that the store was "probably the most stunningly handsome grocery in the world, certainly in New York", but "the pricing was insane. They hadn't paid enough attention to the competition." She reported that she'd talked to De Laurentiis: "Dino's reaction was that I'm full of it. And we're meeting over a bowl of pasta to discuss it."^[7] A review in The San Francisco Examiner said that it was "worth a peek and a purchase".^[8][9]

DDL Foodshow was later considered to be a forebear of the new Italian specialty goods food-store restaurant dining attraction Eataly.^[10]

De Laurentiis' brief first marriage in Italy was annulled.^[11]

In 1949, De Laurentiis married Italian-British actress Silvana Mangano, with whom he had four children: Veronica, an author and actress; Raffaella, a fellow film producer; Federico, also a film producer who died in a plane crash in 1981; and Francesca. His granddaughter through Veronica is chef Giada De Laurentiis, while his nephew through his brother Luigi is fellow film producer Aurelio De Laurentiis. He and Mangano divorced in 1988,^[12] and she died of lung cancer the following year.

Having lived in the U.S. since 1976,^[13] De Laurentiis became an American citizen in 1986.^[14]

In 1990, De Laurentiis married American producer Martha Schumacher, who had produced many of his films since 1985. They had two daughters named Carolyna and Dina and remained married until his death in 2010. Schumacher died of cancer in 2021.

On 10 November 2010, at the age of 91, De Laurentiis died at his home in Beverly Hills, California.^{[15][16][17][18]}

In 1957, De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for producing La Strada (1954). This was a unique occasion when the producers' names were included in the nominations, and they, not the director Federico Fellini, received the award.

In 2001, De Laurentiis received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.^[19]

In 2012, he was posthumously honored with the America Award by the Italy–USA Foundation.^{[citation needed]}

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dino De Laurentiis.

• Dino De Laurentiis Company Official site
• Dino De Laurentiis at IMDb
• Who Was Dino De Laurentiis? Archived 15 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine – image slideshow by Life magazine